What is Video Marketing?
We all know videos can be educational, funny, or time killers. Who isn’t guilty of falling down the rabbit hole for minutes or hours, watching videos about anything and everything. But what is Video Marketing and how can it help your business?
Video Marketing is using video to promote or market your brand, product or service. It can (and should) be used on multiple platforms and mediums, but in different ways. There are countless ways to use video including:
– Customer testimonials
– Videos from live events
– How-to videos
– Explainer videos
– Comedic/Humor (entertainment) videos
When incorporated into your Marketing Strategy correctly you could see an increase in traffic, conversions, and SERP rank.
Here are a few ways video can help your business.
People Love Video!
Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve noticed video is growing on all mediums. 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool — up from 63% over the last year (Source: Hubspot). This isn’t just because businesses are choosing to use video, its reflective of what the general population is looking for. 72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by way of video (Source: HubSpot). Preference varies based on the topic, but it’s a safe bet that most people will prefer a video over text in most cases. When promoting and marketing your business you’re not only in competition with similar companies, but you’re also competing with all other mediums. Who isn’t guilty of doing two, three, and four things at once? Video is a great way to get an undivided or slightly divided attention. Investing in video content, instead of text, can be a great way to increase traffic and conversions.
SEO Benefits
In addition to preferred way to consume content, video also offers several SEO benefits. A website is 53 times more likely to reach the front page of Google if it includes video” (Source: Insivia). This doesn’t mean you need to completely revamp you website and include multiple videos per page. You should simply incorporate videos when appropriate throughout your website. A good place to start would be an introduction video on your homepage and a video on your service pages.
Even if your website doesn’t land on the first page, there’s still a big benefit of including video. Video increases organic search traffic on a website by 157% (Source: Conversion XL). The more organic visits (sessions) you generate the higher your ranking will be.
Enhances Social Media
If you’re on social media personally or for business it’s hard to miss the growing pieces of video content. From short clips, IGTV videos, or Youtube videos, there are countless ways to watch video, and people are taking advantage of it. Facebook has over 8 billion video views per day (Source: TechCrunch) and Snapchat users watch 10 billion videos each day (Source: Mashable).
Using social media to grow your brand is a very effective way to reach a wider audience and video content can make it even better. Social video gets shared 1200% more than text and images combined (Source: Wordstream). More shares leads to a large reach and potentially more followers and conversions. Sharing your introduction video, an explainer video, or even a video on your services can reach far more people than text or link back to your website.
Again, it’s not required to convert every piece of content on your social platforms into a video. It’s important to know what your target audience responds to and use a mixture of content types to keep things fresh.
Increasing Lead and Sales
Marketing is all about the ROI and video has this in spades. As we’ve learned, video can help increase reach and traffic to your website or store. In addition, it can also help enhance your sales funnel. Videos attach 300% more traffic and help to nurture leads (Source: MarketingSherpa). Naturally, if you generate more traffic while using a popular content type, you will see a higher ROI.
We are far from the days when you walk into a store knowing nothing about a product. Consumers are far more informed than ever thanks to the internet. Nearly 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store (Source: Hubspot). Searching for products and services has become a solid part of the sales funnel. Creating a video on your product or service is a great way to make it appealing for potential customers.
Video Marketing Best Practices
Now that you know how Video Marketing can improve your business, here are a few tips to improve and optimize your videos.
Shorter is Better
When it comes to videos marketing, shorter is better. While videos are the preferred content, people still don’t want to spend 10 minutes watching an introduction video. Videos under two minutes long get the most engagement (Source: Wistia). Videos don’t need to be rushed, but when in doubt, keep it short. If you have a longer video try cutting into shorter clips. It will give you the shorter video you need and also give you a few options when choosing which video you promote your business.
Focus on the First 30 Seconds
Video advertisements differ from social media or website videos. Mostly because people do not choose to see them. As a result, many people skip the video ad to get to the content they were originally looking for. 33% of viewers will stop watching a video after 30 seconds, 45% by one minute, and 60% by two minutes (Source: Ad Age). When creating video ads keep it under 30 seconds. If you can’t keep it short, be sure to include key information in the first 30 seconds to reach the most people.
Get Out the Camera!
Video Marketing is a great strategy to include in your marketing plan. It’s versatile, appealing, memorable, and a great way to show your brand identity and values. With its growth and high ROI, its quickly becoming a must have for any marketing plan.
Need a little help getting started? Feel free to contact us with any questions.